A/N: So sorry guys for the late update. My brain was still on vacation mode, and this sequence of events was a bit difficult to write. However, it is quite long, and I hope you enjoy, especially you newcomers who began following this story in my absence. Thank you :)

Early April, Sweden

10:00 AM

Chung Ae had always known it, had always known he would abandon her someday like Hyun Sub did day after day, week after week, year after year.

But today she had to see him. Today he would have to listen to her. Today was the day she had given him birth, for god's sake, and if he wouldn't take her phone calls, she would simply surprise him with a visit.

The lady in the dark sunglasses adjusted her diamond bracelet and her wedding ring as she settled comfortably into the back of the luxury cab transporting her from the airport to her younger son's house.

She had been a fool to let him come here when she needed him so desperately. Now he was doing god-knows-what and not giving her a second thought.

People were always taking her love for granted. They were always taking, taking, taking and leaving her with scraps.

She had been forced into this godforsaken marriage too!

But she loved him. She couldn't help herself.

She had fallen in love with him when they had first been introduced by their parents. It had been at a private auction of his and some other artists' pieces, and she spent the rest of the night stealing glances at him like a shy schoolgirl, hoping she might catch his eye. He seemed intent on slipping away from her, though, especially after their engagement was announced, though he was always cordial with her at social events.

Then one night she spotted him in a club—a club, of all places—while she was enjoying a rare night out with some college schoolmates. He was sitting in one of the lounge areas, looking up at a girl in stockings and a gray coat who stood before him, saying something Chung Ae couldn't catch. She couldn't see the girl's face, just her long wavy hair that hung almost to her waist, but Hyun Sub's lips curled up in an amused smirk as the girl gestured with her arms.

One of Chung Ae's schoolmates pulled her away briefly, and when she turned back, the girl was gone, but Hyun Sub's expression had turned sour, and he looked at his drink as though it were poison. Before she could think through what she was doing, her feet carried her over to him, and she slid into the booth until she was right next to him but not quite touching him.

She was glad for the dress she was wearing that night—a strapless, figure-hugging red dress with a small slit up the back. At first, she made small talk, although he didn't seem to be listening, but at some point he turned toward her and laid a hand on her knee, and his eyes looked at her then like some type of rage was consuming him.

No, no, not rage, she told herself. Desire.

He never looked at her that way. He barely looked at her at all. Her brain told her something wasn't right, but she didn't protest when he started kissing her face and neck and ran his hand up her side and lightly stroked her breast. After a few brief, passionate moments, he stopped abruptly and, mumbling 'thank you,' tapped her underneath her chin. Sliding out of the booth, he grabbed his coat and headed for the door, leaving Chung Ae to stare in confusion at his retreating back.

She would not give up easily, though. Following him out—chasing him, practically, and almost falling in her heels—she called out his name and demanded to know why he stopped.

He turned around and eyed her curiously.

"Why did I stop?" he repeated.

"If you're worried that I'm…" Chung Ae paused to catch her breath. "…scared of what other people might think of me…I'm not."

"And what, exactly, do you care about, Chung Ae-sshi?" Hyun Sub stepped a bit closer to her, and she thought she saw the slightest smirk on his face.

"I care about you," she answered confidently.

"You care about me?" He stepped even closer to her, and she felt her back hit a wall.

"Yes." She swallowed.

"Really?"

"Of course. We'll be getting married in a month."

Hyun Sub chuckled a bit and studied her face. He touched his thumb to her lips and traced them, and she could feel his warm breath on her mouth.

"Well, then," he whispered, "aren't I lucky to have such a devoted bride?"

The wedding had taken place a month after that, and it had been just as well, Chung Ae had thought, when she found out she was pregnant with Il Hyun.

Sometimes now when she was drugged up and lingering halfway between waking and sleeping, she replayed the memory of that first night, the first night he took her, took every last piece of her, and she hated him, and she never wanted him to stop.

Yi Jeong had been having a good birthday morning.

Not a great birthday morning, exactly, but a peaceful one, at least. He didn't have classes until that afternoon, and Ga Eul had promised to video chat with him later that evening. At the moment, he was busy applying an amber glaze to a pot while soft piano music played in the background. Up on his perch, Milo had turned his back on Yi Jeong, apparently finding the process of painting pottery thoroughly uninteresting.

Yi Jeong had just about determined to let the pot dry and take a shower when his doorbell rang.

He was not expecting company, and when he opened the door and saw who was standing outside, he wondered if he should have pretended not to be at home.

"Omma! What brings you all the way up here?!"

"What? I can't see my son on his birthday?" She thrust a gift-wrapped box out to him, and he took it, surprised at the maternal gesture.

His mother wasted no time at making her way inside, though from her lack of luggage she didn't seem intent on staying. This, at least, relieved Yi Jeong.

They went to his workshop where she marveled over his work for a few minutes, picking up several finished pieces and inspecting them.

"Omma, can I get you some tea?" Yi Jeong asked when she had sat down.

She smiled kindly at him.

"Please."

Once he had served the tea and they were seated across from one another at one of the tables, his mother began to talk about how much they missed his art at the museum. Then the subject moved to how his hand was coming along and how his classes were progressing that semester.

She looked well, he thought, much better than how she had looked when he left for Sweden. He knew she had been released from the hospital several months ago and since then had been under constant supervision. Whether she had snuck away from her supervision in Seoul or at the airport in Stockholm, he wasn't sure, but he didn't really care to find out at the moment. When his mother was of a clear mind, he liked spending time with her without her watchful companions.

"Which is exactly what I want to talk to you about," his mother said at the end of a long spiel about his father's latest exhibit. "Can't you come back to Korea?"

Yi Jeong had been so lost in thought, marveling at how healthy his mother looked compared to the stick figure he'd said goodbye to, that the question caught him off guard.

"I'm sorry, what?"

She laid her arm across the table and grasped his hand—his bad hand—and said, "We can get you the best medical care. There's no need to be all this way away from home."

"Omma," Yi Jeong said, pulling his hand away, "I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not just here to get therapy for my hand. I have a lot to learn—"

"That's what tutors are for," she insisted. "Name anyone—anyone in the world you want to study with—I can get them. They'll come for the right price. I still have my father's inheritance, remember?"

"Omma, I'm not going anywhere. Let it go." He had thought this might be a good day.

"But Yi Jeong-ah—"

"I said, 'Let it go.'" He glared at her. "Can't we talk about something else?" Yi Jeong picked up the platter of tea and walked over to the sink with it. He heard her get up and follow him.

When he had roughly deposited the dishes in the sink and had turned back around, she thrust some pictures into his hands. They were all of his father and, he guessed, his new 'girlfriend.'

"This is her. Get rid of her, Yi Jeong-ah. Please? For your Omma? You're good at doing things like that. I came to you because I knew you would help me."

"Things like that? Things like what, exactly?" Yi Jeong spat the words out and threw the pictures on the ground. "Omma, I'm a potter, not a dispatch service." Those pictures reminded him of the ones of him and Ga Eul, and it made him sick.

Turning on his heel, he started walking to the front door to show her out.

She followed, calling after him, "Jeong-ah! Jeong-ah!"

He reached the door. His fingers gripped the doorknob.

"You don't care about your poor omma. No one cares. Everyone is leaving me!"

He jerked the door open and stepped out, intending to drive her back to the airport.

"It's because of that girl, isn't it?!" his mother cried out hysterically, and Yi Jeong froze. He stood halfway between the front door and his car, listening to his mother's heels clatter over the stone walkway and finally feeling her arm clamp around his, her manicured nails digging into him.

"Jeong-ah." She tugged on his arm. "Jeong-ah." Resting her head on his shoulder, she sniffled and leaned half of her weight against him.

Yi Jeong stood very still, faintly aware of her sobbing, sometimes wailing, into his shoulder and unsure if he had heard her correctly. Did she know about Ga Eul?

He doubted he would get much of an answer about what she knew or how much she knew right then. She was tiring out. Her fits normally ended like that. She'd cry and scream until she had emptied herself, and then she would just lay there, staring at nothing, sometimes trembling, sometimes clutching a pillow to herself, sometimes mumbling nonsense, and sometimes becoming perfectly still, so still he could hardly hear her breathe.

As her sobs lessened, he took her hand and, standing her up a bit more, led her to the car and sat her down in the passenger seat. She slumped over in the seat, her body limp as she silently poured out her remaining tears into her hands.

Yi Jeong went around to the driver's side and got in.

"Omma," he urged, glancing over at her after a moment. "Please stop crying. Haven't you cried enough over him by now?"

His mother gazed up at him through tearful eyes and mumbled sorrowfully, "You're just like him, you know that? Oh god, you look just like him."

Same Day, Sweden

12:00 PM

Smiling at the pretty flowers lining the walkway next to the front door, Ga Eul unlocked the door to Yi Jeong's house using the key Woo Bin had given her. She had been fretting over what to get Yi Jeong for his birthday for over a month prior. After all, what do you get a guy who quite literally has everything? Now, she was glad she had gone to Woo Bin for advice. They had become closer since Yi Jeong had gone to Sweden, in a brother-sister sort of way, and he had suggested she surprise Yi Jeong with a visit, providing her with a planet ticket and saying that would be part of his gift to Yi Jeong as well.

Her flight to Sweden had been delayed for about two hours, but she had finally arrived at Yi Jeong's house with plenty of time to decorate the place before he came back from his classes. Pulling her small suitcase behind her, she walked inside and shut the door. As she walked towards the room she'd stayed in on her previous visit, she became aware of a faint whirring sound echoing down the hallway. The noise grew louder and more distinct the closer she got to the bedroom door, which was slightly ajar, and when she opened it, she saw one of Yi Jeong's staff vacuuming the floor.

His staff. She'd forgotten about them. Yi Jeong wasn't supposed to know she was there, but what if they demanded to know who she was and called to inform him of her arrival?

Wait. The woman wasn't Korean, but Swedish. A rather rotund yet robust-looking woman, she was probably in her late forties or early fifties and had short, curly, bright auburn hair. Instead of a uniform, the woman wore loose tan pants and a collared blouse.

The woman jumped a little when she noticed Ga Eul standing there and exclaimed something in accented English. She switched off the vacuum..

"Ah…Yes, hello," Ga Eul said in English. She smiled broadly, hoping the woman wouldn't ask any questions and would just let her have the room. When the woman just stared at her, her eyes studying Ga Eul like she was trying to remember something, Ga Eul continued haltingly, "I am…okay…thank you." She quickly bowed out of habit, although upon straightening up she realized she didn't need to bow to the staff. Besides, the woman wasn't even Korean, but she suddenly smiled back at Ga Eul with a look of sheer delight. Coming over to Ga Eul, she grasped one of Ga Eul's hands in her large ones and shook it firmly.

She said a few more words Ga Eul couldn't understand and a few that she could understand, enough to know that the woman was greeting her. Then she reached behind Ga Eul, took her suitcase from her, and rolled it around to the front of the dresser. After setting the suitcase down, she grabbed her vacuum from the other side of the room and hastily retreated into the hallway, nodding her head to Ga Eul as she went and saying something else that sounded like gibberish to Ga Eul's ears.

Suddenly alone, Ga Eul wondered at the absence of Yi Jeong's Korean staff before spotting a familiar cat as he crept tentatively out from underneath the bed and approached her.

"Milo! What are you doing in here?" Picking the cat up, she stroked his fur, and her hand brushed up against a few too many sticky clumps. "Hey, what did you get on you?" She held him out in front of her, and he squirmed a bit. "What have you been getting up too, huh?"

The cat just looked sullenly down at the floor and flicked his tail.

"All right." Ga Eul sighed. "Don't tell me. But I guess I'll have to clean you up before I do anything else."

Yi Jeong's driving speed had finally risen to such a level that his mother snapped out of her dark musings and began to protest.

"Yi Jeong-ah," she said, a slight tremble in her voice, "Slow down a bit, dear."

"Omma," Yi Jeong said, his voice calm. "I always drive fast, or did you miss that character trait when you were comparing me to Appa?"

"Jeong-ah, slow down, please."

"Isn't it great?" Yi Jeong asked. "One minute you're coasting peacefully along, and the next you're hurtling down the road at one hundred miles an hour."

"Jeong-ah, I am your mother, and I demand that you slow down this car right now!"

"Yeah, it's great, isn't it?" Yi Jeong continued as the motor purred noisily underneath them. "How people just jerk you around when you're least expecting it?" He jerked the wheel in a sudden but controlled motion, and they swerved over into the other lane and then back into their own lane.

"Jeong-ah, you're driving like a crazy person! Stop the car! You're going to kill us!"

Yi Jeong looked over at her and replied, "A crazy person, is that it?" He sped up as they approached a bend in the road.

"Jeong-ah, we can't take this curve that fast!"

As they rounded the curve, the car careened nearly off the road, and its tires squealed on the pavement as Yi Jeong twisted the wheel and set the car back on its course into the middle of nowhere. He had never traveled this road before, but it looked like it headed further and further into the countryside along the sea. He'd thought about driving his mother straight to the airport, but there would be a scene, no doubt, and he really needed someone to escort her safely back, or there was no telling what she would do if left to her own devices.

Plus his mother seemed terrified of what he would do next, and it gave him a small degree of pleasure to watch her squirm.

But it was a perverted sort of pleasure, much like everything else in their relationship, and Yi Jeong knew it. Finally, he slowed down and veered off the road toward a cliff overlooking the ocean. He stopped the car just short of the cliff edge, immediately getting out and walking right to the edge. He kicked angrily at the dirt, and a small piece of clay broke off and fell into the roiling waters beneath.

"You could have killed us!" his mother exclaimed from behind him. "We could have gone over that cliff and died!"

"Like you haven't tried that before!" Yi Jeong shot back as he turned around.

He regretted it instantly.

His mother's face turned a shade whiter, and she trembled though it wasn't cold, and the look she gave him…the look she gave him…it reminded Yi Jeong of how Ga Eul looked when he had yelled at her over Christmas that one night. Yi Jeong had always been unpredictable when he got angry, and his mind very quickly went to the darkest places it could, but for some reason that image of Ga Eul triggered something in him, sobered him up almost, and he turned away from his mother and gazed out at the tumultuous ocean, which was brooding and desolate in all its magnificence.

Ga Eul had finished Milo's bath with some trouble. Apparently, the rumors were true, and cats really did hate water. There was no sight of the cleaning woman when Ga Eul went back out into the hallway and into the other common areas, so Ga Eul assumed she must have left for the day. When she had set Milo outside to finish drying in the sunshine, she turned her attention to decorating Yi Jeong's workshop.

Looking around the workshop, she wondered why she saw none of the pottery she had sent.

Ah, right. They weren't that good. Maybe they were too embarrassing to display.

For his birthday, she had gotten him a nice tie—well, the nicest one she could afford—to replace the one she'd thrown in the trash. She had also made some additional picture frames to hang on the wall and had filled them with pictures of him and the rest of the F4 as well as of her and Jan Di. She had gotten Milo his own personalized food bowl, which she placed outside underneath the awning by the back door as a peace offering. After a while, she opened the door and peered outside to see if Milo had eaten anything, and he strutted inside the workshop like he owned the place and curled up on one of the high counters where he watched Ga Eul struggle to hang all of the colorful streamers she'd brought, his tail flicking back and forth.

She still couldn't quite believe how nonchalant Yi Jeong had acted about the whole incident over Christmas. She had tried to bring it up again—once—before the trip ended because she had felt so awkward, but Yi Jeong had waved her off with some smart remark that steered the conversation in an entirely different direction.

In any event, she had decided to put the whole thing behind her, although she did wonder what had become of Gong Yoo—if he had really embarked for Taiwan like he had said he would. A curious thing had happened when she went over to his parent's house after finding their address in one of her mother's old address books. The apartment complex had been torn down to make way for a new high-rise office building—recently but not recently enough for Gong Yoo to have been there. Then again, his parents had probably moved while he had been away. That had to be it, Ga Eul had decided, but she had not been able to shake the distinct feeling, as she walked from the site of the old complex to the bus stop, that she was being watched.

"Ouch!" Ga Eul sucked on her fingertip, which she had just banged on one of the workshop's overhead beams. Reaching up, she stuck the last of the streamer onto the beam with a piece of clear tape. Then she stepped down from the stepladder she had found and surveyed her work.

Decorations, check.

Cake, check.

Presents, check.

Now all she had to do was wait for him to arrive.

Ga Eul poured herself another glass of water from the pitcher she had brought from the kitchen and sat down.

She looked around the room again and then paused and looked down at her skirt.

Ah, of course! She needed to take a shower and change clothes…and redo her makeup…and do something with her hair…

Ga Eul looked at her watch and realized the day had gone by quicker than she had anticipated. How was she going to have enough time?

Meanwhile in South Korea

Madeleine stubbed the last of her cigarette out on the ground with her heel, causing a thin layer of dust to settle on the top of her shoe. If her shoes got ruined, it would be her fault. She should be waiting in the car instead of standing around the dirty construction site while her father finished his survey of his new hotel building site with the construction foreman. Of course she had worn a dress today—her new favorite, a silky, dark purple affair that tapered down at the bottom until it stopped halfway between her thighs and knees, revealing her long, slim legs. A few workers who were straggling out of the construction site at the end of work day leered at her when she approached the building but none for too long as she shot them a look that said 'go to hell.' Ordinarily, she would just ignore it, as she considered herself above it all anyway, but today she felt so on edge—like she might pound someone's head in if one more thing set her off. Her fingers trembled as she lit another cigarette.

She'd lit her first cigarette out of curiosity when she was fifteen, and she'd never quite grown to like them, but she still smoked them when she was having a bad day since they calmed her nerves.

Besides, her mother hated seeing her smoke, and that was more than reason enough for her to continue.

Her father, on the other hand, she'd always kept that particular habit a secret from. So why was she hidden behind some beams at the back of his now-empty construction site, chain-smoking like she wanted to start a fire?

Maybe she did want to start a fire.

Maybe someday she would start one—the kind of fire that won't be put out with water.

Madeleine pulled her shades off and pinched the bridge of her nose where her sunglasses had been sitting there for too long. The sun was going down, anyway.

Then she noticed him, a cocky face in an expensive leather jacket walking coolly towards her as if he had been expecting her to be there.

"What are you staring at?" she asked when he stopped a few feet away from her.

"You go to Shinwa, don't you?" The words came out of his mouth in a lazy, nonchalant way, like he already knew the answer.

"If you knew who I was, you wouldn't be asking such a ridiculous question." Madeleine gestured with her cigarette as she spoke and shifted her weight to her other leg.

The guy smiled at her.

"And if you knew who I was, you wouldn't be smoking so close to the construction materials."

Please. As if the workers don't do that all the time, Madeleine thought.

She dropped her barely smoked cigarette in front of him and pulled out her carton to retrieve a new one.

"Yah!" she protested as the guy snatched them out of her hand, but not before she could pull one from the box.

"I warned you," he said. "You won't like the consequences."

"Oh, and what are you trying to save me from—an untimely death?" Madeleine mocked in a sweet voice as she lit her new cigarette. "At the rate I'm smoking these things, I'll die soon anyway."

"Please don't. It would be a shame for the world to lose such a beauty."

"Oh, I'm sure you're tremendously concerned about the rest of the world."

"Maybe I am," the guy continued, stepping a bit closer to her, "or maybe I just like what I see."

"Then you better un-see it," she snapped, expecting him to back off, but he instead smiled.

"But I know you. You go to Shinwa, don't you? You never talk to anyone. You never hang out with the other girls." The guy finished in English, "A woman of mystery."

Madeleine stared at his amused face for a long moment before finally giving him a tight-lipped smile and answering, "You don't know me, and I've certainly never seen you before."

She tried to step around him, but the guy moved to stand in front of her, so close that Madeleine almost stepped backward but determinedly dug her heels into the ground instead.

"Don't lie when you're sure to get caught. Everyone knows who I am, and you should know that nobody lies to me."

Madeleine scoffed and glanced off to the side, taking another draw from her cigarette. She had felt a tinge of heat creep up into her face when his voice dropped lower with that last statement. His tone had been light but with an underlying darkness to it. She'd heard rumors about him. Song Woo Bin. The Mafia Prince.

"Madeleine Yi, isn't it? That's how the French would say it, am I right?"

Madeleine smiled.

Taking a final draw off of her cigarette, she blew the smoke directly in his face and nodded toward two approaching figures way back in the distance.

"Woo Bin Song, don't you have some place to be? I think your foreman's waving at you." With that, she slid by him and tossed her cigarette down, digging it into the dirt with her heel. Thankfully, her father hadn't seemed to notice her, as he had his head inclined towards the foreman. She dug some perfume out of her clutch and hurriedly spritzed it on.

Her father would probably still notice the lingering smoke smell.

Who the hell cared anymore?

Sweden, Much Later That Same Day

It was 11:30 PM, and he hadn't come home. Ga Eul still had on her lavender dress from earlier, refusing to put her pajamas on in case he walked through the door as soon as she did that. She had occupied herself with reading for a large part of the late afternoon. At about 8:00 PM, she had made ramen after discovering a few packets in the kitchen.

She fleetingly thought that, perhaps, some of his friends from school had invited him out to eat for his birthday or…well…just out.

But he had to remember their video chat, which should have taken place at 7:30 PM!

Ga Eul closed her book for the hundredth time and sighed. She would call him, but she didn't have phone service in Sweden, and she didn't know his WiFi password either, strange as that seemed, so using the internet was out of the question.

Agh, she hadn't thought this through!

Ga Eul hit herself on the forehead with her book. She got up wearily and walked back to her room to use the bathroom and grab a blanket since it was getting quite cold in Yi Jeong's workshop as the night progressed.

She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror for a time, noting the dark circles that had started to form under her eyes. As she rubbed at one of her eyes, her mascara smeared just a bit, and she grabbed a tissue to remove it. She was holding said tissue up to her eye when she heard a door slam shut.

The front door.

Finally!

Dabbing a bit of lotion on the tissue, she quickly removed the rest of the smeared mascara and spritzed herself with the perfume sitting on the bathroom counter.

When she had left the bathroom and rushed over to her bedroom door, however, she stopped short. She could hear him walking past her bedroom, but it sounded more like stumbling. Cracking open the door, she poked her head out and saw Yi Jeong's figure retreating into the blackness towards his workshop. Occasionally, he careened to the side and pressed up against the wall like he might hold onto it.

Ga Eul knew she should go after him to see if he was okay, but for some reason her feet would not move, not until she couldn't see him anymore and her brain had caught up with the erratic beating of her heart.

Rushing back to the place where she had already spent so many hours that day, Ga Eul saw in the dim moonlight that Yi Jeong had passed out on the floor, and even when Ga Eul flipped on the lights to get a better look, he didn't move except to adjust his head like he was trying to get more comfortable.

As she approached him, he coughed a few times and winced as he turned his head to face her.

His eyes remained shut.

Oddly enough, he wasn't wearing a suit nor a tie, just black pants and a plain dark gray shirt.

Ga Eul knelt down beside him and touched her palm to his cheek. He smelled strongly of alcohol.

"Yi Jeong Sunbae," she said softly.

He nudged his face against her hand but said nothing.

"Sunbae, I think you better get to bed. You'll catch a cold sleeping on the floor."

She shook him gently, and he groaned and mumbled something under his breath.

"Sunbae." She shook him a bit harder. "Yah, do you always sleep in your workshop like this?"

Suddenly, Yi Jeong winced as if he was in pain, and Ga Eul took her hands off of him.

He adjusted himself so that the back of his head rested against the floor again. Gradually, his facial expression smoothed out, and soon he looked rather peaceful lying there.

She really hated to wake him up.

Besides, Ga Eul doubted that she could transport him from the workshop to his bedroom. Instead, she went back to her own bedroom and grabbed two pillows and some blankets. She lifted Yi Jeong's head and stuck one pillow underneath it and put a thick woolen blanket over him, tucking it over his shoulders and around his chin. Then she settled herself on the floor beside him. She lay there and stared at his face where the moon illuminated it until her eyes grew too heavy and closed in sleep.